Iterations
by aelysian
Summary: When John talks about 'Future John', he should be more specific, because Cameron has more secrets than just the local library. Short oneshot for Ourselves Alone. Might be slightly AU.


**Author's Note:** Just a short oneshot playing with the idea of time travel, originally posted to livejournal.

Note: This is a repost of a fic originally published 3.10.09, transferred from a previous account.

**Iterations**

"_That's a window, bird."_

_*_

Her power cell at its current state will allow her to function well beyond the lifetimes of anyone living; she will outlive Sarah and John by decades. This is, of course, in the linear understanding of time. She lives in loops and circles and she has never seen John older than forty three years of age.

The malfunction in her left hand is nothing new; there is little left of the original components in her construction. She is a patchwork doll, Dr. Frankenstein's monster, made from parts old and new, past and future.

John likes fixing things, likes using his hands, so when he finds her in the shed, she engages his aid. He is adept, skilled at the diagnosis and repair, unperturbed by the reality of her structure beneath the organic coverings. She adds this to her log; he's falling six months below the average. The number of observations ticks upward.

*

"_Future John has better information than you do."_

_*_

When the ends meet again he will understand.

She knows him better than he will ever know himself. He can only be this one, this John, and she has seen a dozen, each different enough to make her fear she will never win and it will never stop. The possibility is distressing. The files on John are beginning to merge, too crowded in her mind, pressing in as she struggles to separate the strands of lives lived and those still yet to come.

*

"_I'll make you a sandwich."_  
"_Wait, why?"_  
"_You're hungry."_  
"_Why don't we let hungry be my problem?"_  
"_Sometimes it's nice to have help."_

_*_

Too late, she is aware of her miscalculation. This John is not that John and she is operating ahead of the curve; it is too early and he is disturbed by this aberration in her pattern of behaviour. Suspicious. She has made such statements in that past, carefully chosen cues to facilitate a predicted response, but this...she is making mistakes. She does not make mistakes.

*

"_Are you asking me if future John kept secrets from me? I'm sure he did."_

_*  
_

He always does and this John will too. Sometimes they're contingency plans, battle manoeuvres. Sometimes they're blonde women named Kate.

But this is fair; she has her own, a century of secrets housed within this body in perfect clarity. She is a weapon, a vessel, the Holy Grail.

But her chip has suffered damage that exceeds her projections and it will be another fifteen years before she can undergo proper maintenance again. At the current rate of physical confrontation, there is a 17% chance that functionality will be reduced to the point of rendering her useless. She's falling six percent above the average.

*

"_You don't belong here. John isn't right for you and you're not right for him. He can't see that."_

_*  
_

All evidence at her disposal indicates that this is true. She has seen no sign of Riley Dawson in the future with any significant proximity to John Connor, nor has she made any positive contributions to John's development in the present. She should be null, void, insignificant, but John's affection for her has created an extraneous variable, a negative coefficient. This is acceptable in the short run but Riley is falling six weeks behind schedule.

She should remedy the situation, to return them to the prescribed path. She should kill Riley or goad Jesse Flores into doing so, remove the errant factor and the threat to John. There are many things she should do, but the words are coming out all wrong because she's speaking without filters and the truth is undiluted and she can't be sure that's she's not spilling her secrets.

This cycle is proving to be difficult.

*

"_It's usually not a decision."_

_*  
_

Maintaining the spiral does not require a decision-making process. Perpetuating the loop is paramount; it must be protected at all costs. This is her purpose.

John tells her that it is not her decision to make but he doesn't know. He doesn't know about the round and round and there's something wrong, there's something _wrong_ because there is something broken inside and she cannot decipher the code to find the answer.

This is not the game because someone has changed the rules without telling her and how is she to find all the pieces now?

She is changed, tarnished, and she isn't sure if it's the explosion or John or the sparks of electricity she calls herself. The cause is irrelevant at this juncture; she is not the Cameron she was and that changes everything.

*

"_If she's out there, she'll call you. Eventually, she always does."_

_*  
_

In this respect, Riley does not deviate. To do so would be detrimental to her mission and Cameron understands missions. Riley will call because she is static, because she is _this_ Riley and no other. She is not subject to the data compression difficulties or the cognitive damage that plagues her now.

John is unsure, afraid that Riley is dead and she has killed her. This is her cue and she does not miss it. She never misses it.

*

"_You tried to fix me. Twice now. It's not working."_

_*  
_

She is not authorized to self-terminate. It is hardwired into her and John has never attempted to alter it. But when she sees the pocket watch in the window of a pawn shop, chaos stops swirling for a moment, long enough for her to see. Superficial analysis indicates a 97% probability that this is the watch John carried, one he never opened in her presence, one she has not seen since the first iteration. It is a secret and she purchases it for twelve dollars.

The device is simple but it's important to make things right. She cuts into her scalp, an incision just wide enough in diameter to expose the shock dampener, and feels the hum of her life against her fingers. She has never done this before and she wonders if Cameron has, because this is neither the beginning nor the end.

*

"_All you have to do is hit the switch." _

_*  
_

It is good decision, she thinks. As a rule, she does not deviate, but this time is different and she is more than Cameron, more than TOK 715, more than Allison Young.

She likes this John the best and she slips the chain around his neck, gifting him the secret.

John is disturbed and he is not yet any manifestation of what he calls 'Future John' but she knows who he is and who he will be because _I love you John, I love you and you love me._ And maybe they'll go on for a little while longer and he'll wear the watch around his neck and keep other secrets instead.

And perhaps one day his fingers will find the switch and the backwards and forwards, the round and round will finally end for her and another will take her place because there is always a Cameron to guard the circles and loops.

She is not the first and she will not be the last.


End file.
